More delays to Harley Bennell comeback has his AFL future looking shaky

Harley Bennell's return to football with Fremantle is no closer with news he is at least three weeks away from being available to play, strengthening fears the gifted on-baller will never realise his massive potential.

Ross Lyon has said the troubled Docker is still "rehabbing" his injured calf and the club will have to continue to wait.

Bennell managed 81 games in five years at Gold Coast before crossing to Fremantle at the end of the 2015 season, when the Suns chose to trade out the talented midfielder after he was dogged by drug related controversies.

He failed to play a game in his first year on the Dockers' list and struggled through 2017 before finally notching the last two matches of the season.

Lyon hoped the taste of senior football would whet Bennell's appetite and calm his controversial behaviour, but it wasn't to be.

The 25-year-old was handed a club imposed eight-week ban and forced to train with Peel Thunder after being filmed getting thrown out of a nightclub on the eve of resuming training after the Christmas break.

As soon as the ban was served Bennell's calf again gave out. Initially it was thought the injury would only rule him out of the first couple of weeks of the season but there is now no definite return date.

Former Carlton premiership player and three-club coach Robert Walls doubts Bennell will ever live up to his potential.

"He's hardly played AFL football for the last two years. He's got off-field issues that have been there for quite a while. He's got soft tissue issues that have been there for a long while," Walls told Fox Sports' AFL Tonight in March.

"To play AFL at this level and play consistently well, you've got to be wholly committed to it, and I just don't see him doing that.

"And that's a shame because obviously he's a talent. The Dockers gifted him a couple of games last season and I think that was good, to give him a taste of it, but again things didn't work out well for him in the off-season.

"So I don't think he'll make it."

Matthew Lloyd: "If Harley Bennell doesn't make it, it will be the biggest waste of talent in the history of the game"